I love jumping into these SNES games with absolutely no idea what to expect. Dream TV comes from Triffix, a company I recognize immediately for a curious NES title called Castelian, a.k.a. Tower Toppler. Dream TV is apparently a split-screen 2-player adventure action game. But with no second player, it becomes a tad annoying that the lower half of the screen is occupied with the visage of your adversary who has put you up to the challenge at hand.

The TV seen in the lower half — ostensibly the eponymous Dream TV — sends you on a mission through different worlds starting with Medieval World to recover puzzle pieces. It’s nice to have a goal. But it’s frustrating to only deal with half the screen. Fortunately, I accidentally discovered that ‘select’ offers the single player the full screen real estate.

But then I get to the section above; what gives? I can’t jump up to that platform. Below is some sort of see-saw but I have no counterweight. Just when it looks like I might be stuck, I start mashing the other heretofore-unused controller buttons. Turns out that the L and R buttons switch to the other character. That means teamwork:

How tough is the game? Tough enough that it starts you off with 10 lives but with no continues. I managed to find the first 6 of 9 puzzle pieces in the medieval world but could go no further. Or perhaps I just didn’t want to. The castle has a lot of doors and there are a lot of keys laying around. However, a character can only hold one key at a time; if he picks up one key he leaves any existing key in the same place. There is a place that I called the key forest:

There were at least 4 different types of keys. If I wanted to open a door, I had to try the key I was already holding. If the key didn’t take, go through that see-saw rigmarole to get back to the dangerous key forest to get another type of key, and try to remember which keys I had already tried.

Still, I gave it a good shot because I was eager to see what else I could possibly figure out about the game. Some brief Googling indicates that no one has any more clue about this game than I do. No matter what obscure game I can find for the NES or SNES, it seems there are some videos for it on YouTube, often with some very unfunny commentary. This game is no exception, with 2 such videos. I had the persistence to figure out more about this game than either of those 2 players. Don’t think that I’m bragging; on the contrary, this might be a good way to simplify future obscure SNES game entries.

At MobyGames:

• Dream TV